Every Tuesday night, Stuart Minkus went to the Ukrainian bakery for a cup of coffee. The older he got, the more he enjoyed a hot beverage or two in the evening, particularly after dinner. His personal physician got on his back occasionally about his caffeine intake, but Stuart had never planned on living forever.
Unlike most in his economic stratus, he still enjoyed taking long walks about the city. As autumn progressed, the sun set earlier each night, and a mild chill grew steadily more pronounced. He felt a momentary pity for anyone who had never experienced a night like this – there was simply nothing like New York City in the fall. He felt like he would happily walk the streets until sunrise, if he didn't have more pressing plans. Soon, too soon, he reached his destination, descended the stairs, and stepped into the surprisingly capacious interior.
"Well, hello, Mr. Minkus!" called Katy from behind the counter. "I thought you might be stopping by soon."
While the establishment had succeeded under its new management, there were still plenty of nights, particularly Tuesdays, when business was slow. The central seating area was occupied as ever, but most of the peripheral tables were empty. Stuart probably came on Tuesdays for this reason. He remembered attending a coffee shop called Central Perk, in a different place, where the coffee was great but there was never a place to sit.
He approached the counter. "Mrs. Hunter, it's good to see you. And congratulations, by the way. I've known Shawn most of my life, and you couldn't find a better husband. It's too bad I couldn't make it to the ceremony."
"It was a very small, very spontaneous event," the woman responded. "We'd have loved to have had you there, if there had been more time."
"I heard that old Mr. Feeny presided over the nuptials," he mentioned.
Katy's face faltered. "Oh, that's right… you and he don't really get along."
Stuart shrugged. "I wouldn't say that. We had a difference of opinion about something, but that was many years ago. I'm sure he performed his role admirably."
"Oh yeah. It was a gorgeous ceremony," she told him. "Are you doing your usual? Large mochaccino?"
"With whipped cream and just a dash of cinnamon," he reminded her, handing her a credit card.
"Naturally." She ran his card and busied herself with the espresso machine while he filled out the slip. "I'm afraid you just missed Farkle. He was in here with the gang about an hour ago, but I think they went over to the Matthews for… something or another."
"Sounds about right." Stuart had been apprehensive about the friendship between his son and Cory's daughter initially, but he had to admit that Farkle had thrived alongside Riley Matthews and the others. He was dating a bright and interesting young woman, and he seemed constantly surrounded by good friends. As a father, he couldn't ask for more.
"Okay, here you go, Mr. Minkus," Katy said, handing him a steaming mug.
"Many thanks, Mrs. Hunter."
Her face reddened slightly in embarrassment. "Actually, I haven't finished the paperwork for the name change yet, so I'm technically not Mrs. Hunter yet."
He snickered. "Fantastic – I can still call you `Ms. Clutterbucket' for another week."
"Actually, I think it might be time for you to start calling me `Katy'," she told him.
He took a sip of his beverage, which had been made perfectly. Katy's first few efforts at barista had been abysmal, but over time her craft was improving. "Will you then agree to call me by my first name?"
"Hmmm. I don't know. I still kind of think of you as a Mister."
"Alas. Someday, perhaps."
"Perhaps," she agreed. "I think Topanga is in the back. Would you like me to send her out so you can speak to her?"
"Only if she has time. I'll take a seat in the corner over there." He indicated a booth nearby, but had only taken two steps before she called out.
"Mr. Minkus!"
He turned around slowly, feigning ignorance. "Yes, Ms. Clutterbucket?"
"What is this?" she asked, holding up his credit card slip as if it might be poisonous.
"A tip?" he hazarded. Seeing that this answer was insufficient, he tried again. "Why don't you think of it as a wedding present? I might have missed the ceremony, but surely I'm allowed to give gifts still."
Katy was shaking her head vehemently. "I don't think I can accept this amount of money…" she said shakily.
Stuart frowned. "That's a pity. I can certainly afford to give it. Anyway, before you reject it, remember that Maya will be going to college soon."
These words had the desired effect. She blushed, as if he had just paid her a personal compliment. "You… you think she's going to college?"
Stuart chuckled. Judging by the itch at the back of his head, Riley's World had been going strong for years, and probably would for several years to come. Riley, Maya, Farkle, and the rest would certainly all go to the same prestigious university, no matter how great the disparity between their relative academic and economic backgrounds. "I think the powers that be have commanded it."
"Oh. I didn't know you were a religious man, Mr. Minkus," she said.
"Well, I don't know if I buy into a god, per se, but I think there are definitely forces at work far more powerful than you or I."
"Well, all the same, thank you… Stuart," she managed with some difficulty.
"And congratulations again, Katy."
Stuart took his seat and pulled out his cell phone. He had learned years before the value of delegating as many of his duties to underlings as possible, but even so the sheer volume of information that he had to address daily was nearly overwhelming. As the co-chairperson of an interdimensional consortium, he was constantly beset by urgent requests for his personal attention. In fact, even Stuart had only a rough idea of the overall size of the Consortium. In one alternate timeline, he had a team of Singaporean graduate students working on estimating the overall size of their business ventures (and believing it to be an outlandish, if entertaining, hypothetical). Quickly, with practiced efficacy, he dismissed most of his new e-mails and responded to a couple more. He took a little more care with the personal missives.
Ned and Hillary, celebrating their subjective fifteenth wedding anniversary, had taken an extended trip downtime, to spend a few weeks with their aged daughter. Stuart's mind reeled a bit looking at pictures of the retirement party thrown for one of their grandchildren. He checked in on a chess game he was playing against Stephen from Neo Chicago, and made a quietly unassuming pawn thrust. Just as he was about to log into Interfacebook, he realized that he was no longer alone. A short, curvy woman had slid into the booth opposite him without him noticing.
"Katherine." He was, of course, the only person that still called her that.
The woman known as Topanga Matthews shook her head, smiling. "Hello, Stuart. How are you?"
He bobbed his head back and forth as if considering the question, and then broke into a wide grin. "Life has been very good to me. How are things with you?"
"Just fine, Stuart," she said, sounding almost annoyed by the question. "You should know by now that you don't have to keep checking in on me. I'm happily married, with two wonderful kids, and a great career. Besides, now I own a small business-" she gestured airily about her "-and I've found that more satisfying than I would have imagined."
"That's great news… So things are good between you and Cory?" he asked timidly.
Katherine groaned, bending at the midsection so she could lightly bang her head on the table. After a moment, she straightened up again."We're fine, Stuart. We're as much in love as we were the day we married, or the day we first fell in love – whenever the hell that was. He's not some closet psychotic, and I'm not in slavery."
Stuart made a face. "I didn't mean to imply-"
"No, you didn't," she cut him off. "You just worry about it. I can tell. You're afraid that by bringing me to this reality, you stole my free will. Which is stupid-"
"It's not stupid."
"It is stupid, because you know full well that a person can live in a sitcom and still retain their free will. So stop worrying about me. You saved my life by bringing me here – you did a good thing," she told him.
Stuart sighed. "Katherine, I'm always going to feel responsible for you. I'll always worry – if only a little bit."
"Well, you can stop worrying. If I ever need out of this life, I can always escape through the closet, right?"
He had to laugh at that. After Katherine and Cory's wedding, they moved into the married dormitories at Pennbrook, and had gone through a rough patch. Stuart had insisted on installing a time continuum vortex in the closet of their place, just in case she ever wanted out. Unfortunately, the device had malfunctioned, porting the user to a deeply strange reality – a fusion or Cory's World and Casablanca.
"Okay, okay – you've convinced me," he laughed.
"Really? So you won't be back in here next Tuesday, checking in on me?"
"Well, we'll see," he told her. "So, how are things on Riley's World?"
She shrugged. "Some up, some down. I don't have much to do with it, actually. I seem to be a peripheral character."
"Really? I find that hard to believe."
"Yeah, but there it is. I think I was a little offended at first, but it does give me a little more room to do the things I want to do. There's never enough hours in the day, unless you know how to travel in time."
"Trust me, it's not as convenient as you might think."
"I'll have to take your word for it. Recently, I've been happy to stay out of it, though. I swear to god, if that love triangle had gone on for another week, I would've actually taken you up on that time continuum vortex."
He laughed loudly again. "I know, I know! I was actually kind of hoping our kids might have ended up together."
"Yeah, at least that would have been something new," Katherine agreed. After a pause, she spoke again. "Have you seen her recently?"
Stuart shook his head. There was no need to ask to whom she was referring. "No, I haven't seen her in… quite a while. It's hard to put a precise time estimate on the comings and goings of time-travelers, of course, but on my personal timeline, it's been a few years – which is usually a key indicator that she's about to turn up. I met her at the Hilbert, and gave her all the lecture notes she needed for the bootstrap. I couldn't even guess what she's been doing since."
Katherine nodded. "You don't think she'd come back here, do you?"
Stuart smiled. "There is no telling what that woman might or might not do. She's completely irrepressible. On the one hand, she tries to stay out of Feeny's turf – when she returns to this timeline, he knows about it. Then again… the thing you have to understand about Topanga is that she isn't malicious at all. She doesn't wish to hurt anyone or even to cause any real trouble, but she's deeply and profoundly mischievous. If she thought it would be funny enough, she'd pop up here, just to see us squirm."
Katherine's head sagged. "Great. Just what I needed."
"I wouldn't worry about it too much. We'll cross that bridge when we get there."
Later, Stuart went back for another mochaccino, this one with an extra shot of espresso – it was going to be a long night. After he finished the second drink, he visited the bakery's restroom. After conducting his business, he Jumped to his office to grab the prepared briefcase, and then Jumped again.
X-X-X-X-X
It was afternoon and his mother's house was empty. The memories evoked by that place came back all in a rush, sucking the breath out of his chest. He took a seat at the kitchen table, setting his briefcase on top, and let the nostalgia wash over him. He couldn't help but compare the scene as it had been to the house as it stood now. A grainy photo of Stuart, aged nine, standing beside his science fair project hung on the wall in the room he occupied. Later, this frame would come to hold Stuart and Jennifer on their wedding day, only to be replaced by one of the first pictures of baby Farkle.
On the counter next to the sink sat his mother's old frying pan, murky water soaking its eggy remains. Her favorite coffee mug, broken around ten years ago, lay on its side nearby. He remembered disliking the old wallpaper, but suddenly he couldn't remember why.
A car whooshed by on the street outside, reminding him of how much louder engines used to be. A bird twittered in the upper limbs of the big elm in front of the house; from somewhere further away came the response. After perhaps an hour, he heard the shuffle of feet in the garage, and for a moment blind panic gripped him, fearing that his mother was about to walk in and find in her kitchen a grown man who bore an uncanny resemblance to her twelve year old son. But he remembered differently.
The door leading to the garage opened, and in walked Stuart Minkus, looking smaller than seemed possible. He dropped his backpack to the kitchen floor and stared at Stuart Minkus with unguarded curiosity. They stared at each other for a long moment.
"Well, get on with it, then," the Younger said at last.
Already knowing what the Younger would say didn't make the line any less funny for the Elder – he laughed heartily, and only stopped when he remembered the offense that laughter gave. "I suppose you've been expecting me."
"No. I was expecting you – I had been expecting you - but you never showed."
"Well, it's so hard to find the time…"
"Har-dee-har. Seriously, though, why are you only showing up now, when everything's already been taken care of? I don't need your help now,"
"You didn't need my help then, either."
"Well, it would have made things a lot easier!"
"At no point in your life have wanted anything handed to you."
"That's pretty damned easy for you to say!" the Younger spat. Tears of frustration welled up in his eyes behind the impossibly thick glasses. "Do you have any idea… yes, you do. Of course you do. You know how much I've worried, how hard all of this has been for me."
Stuart paused to consider those words. "It's a funny thing about growing up – the way you remember things. When I look back on this time in my life, I remember it very fondly. It was difficult and occasionally terrifying, but also challenging and exciting and even wonderful. I have stayed away from you up to this point because you had an important decision to make, and I didn't want to get in the way of that, didn't want to cloud your mind with data about your own future."
"You mean the decision not to join the Diaspora?"
"Precisely."
"Even so-"
"No," the Elder interrupted. "It sounds trite, but you can't be angry at me for what I did to you because we are the same person."
"Like hell I can't. It might not be rational to be angry with you, but I can still do it."
The Elder laughed at this, too. "No, you can't. You need to take ownership of my decision not to interfere with the Diaspora, because you're going to make the same decision."
That shut him up. The Younger chewed on that thought for almost a full minute, and then pulled up a chair and sat across from the Elder. "Can I ask you some questions?"
"Of course."
"Are there any that you will answer?"
"Not many."
"Did you ever find out what happened to Ned?"
The Elder's face fell. "No. I don't know any more about him than you do."
"Does this conversation between us keep me from looking for him?"
"No, it does not. I will tell you that the search is a waste of time, but you'll look anyway. You'll worry that maybe this conversation was still holding you back, that if we hadn't talked about it, you'd have searched far longer, but… in the end, you will do an exhaustive search."
The Younger scoffed."An exhaustive search of the multiverse? The uncountably infinite multiverse?"
The Elder breathed in. His memory of this conversation was not so extensive that he didn't still need to look for the right words. "The mathematics – the so-called Jump Equations - is a little more complicated than that, but that's all I'll say for the time being."
"So I do come to a better understanding of the Jump Equations?" The Younger asked.
The Elder pointedly kept his silence.
"Did… everything turn out all right? I mean, did the Diaspora work? Did the others escape the grasp of Feeny and them?"
"It seems so."
The Younger let out a prolonged sigh of relief.
The Elder watched him begin to visibly squirm, remembering how uncomfortable the next question had made him at the time.
"Do Topanga and I ever…"
"Stuart…" The Elder started.
"It's weird to hear me call me that," The Younger put in.
"Yes it is," agreed the Elder. "Seriously, though, don't ask about Topanga."
"You won't answer?"
"I suppose I would, but… you don't really want the answer to that question."
"I…" The Younger began, but then closed his mouth again. "No, I don't. If you said `yes', I'd pop over to Neo Philadelphia at my first chance and try to make something happen. Ifyou said `no', than I'd have that Ned conundrum again. I'm beginning to see how dangerous it is to ask you questions."
"Then you're done asking questions?"
"You know I am."
"Good." The Elder popped open the briefcase and pulled out a single sheet of paper. "Lottery numbers. Buy a ticket tomorrow. You won't hit the super-jackpot, because you don't want that kind of attention, but you'll walk out of it with a healthy sum. Tearfully, you'll turn the winning ticket over to your mother, saying you know it's stupid to gamble but…" He let his words trail off.
"But I really, really want her to quit her second job," The Younger supplied.
"Then, you ask her if, since you won all the money, she will let you invest a portion of the winnings in the stock market, which you'll both agree is an excellent educational experience for you."
The Younger glanced at the briefcase.
The Elder reached inside and pulled out a thick manila folder, which he handed over.
The Younger took the folder at once and leafed through its contents haphazardly. "What's a `dot-com bubble'?"
"Something you can worry about in a few years."
"How wealthy do we become, exactly? I don't want to go overboard with this," the Younger said. "I have to remember that I'm still living in Cory's World, so I don't want my accumulation of wealth to change the overall landscape of this timeline."
"Obviously enough."
"But we're still pretty wealthy, right?"
"Again, obviously."
They paused. The Younger gave him an appraising look. "It's weird. I kind of feel like I should apologize for being rude to you when I got here, but…"
"But there literally couldn't be a person you need to apologize to less."
"Right. Look, it's fun talking to you, but I think you should be going soon, so I don't accidentally infer more things about my future," The Younger said.
"Well, you're not kicking me out just yet. We have a trip to take together."
"You have something you want to show me?"
"No, I need to introduce you to someone… someone you already encountered in passing, but didn't meet properly," the Elder told him. He was rather enjoying tantalizing his younger self.
"Who?"
"Your partner – a brilliant mind from Neo Chicago. After you materialized on his couch, he got to thinking about wormholes, and he's been independently deriving much of the math you learned from Topanga. The funny thing is, you decided not to join the Diaspora, but you'll still be spending a lot of time in that reality - You two have a lot of work to do to get where I am. You need to refine and expand what you call the Jump Equations."
"What I call it? What… are they actually called?"
"The Minkus-Urkel equations. Or the Urkel-Minkus equations, depending on who you ask. We're still negotiating that part."